SNOW JOB FOR U.S. SKIER AJ KITT, FINISHING FIRST IN A WORLD CUP DOWNHILL IS NOT THE SAME AS WINNING IT

AJ Kitt has lost a World Cup downhill race to a shovel. And hehas lost to a cold front. But when he lost to a fax machine, ithurt.

This is how much sense skiing makes right now: On March 5, Kittwon a World Cup downhill in Aspen, Colo., then had it taken awaythree days later -- in Norway.

So what else is new? Of his four lifetime World Cup downhill wins,three have been overturned. To give you an idea, Franz Klammer won25 World Cup downhills and it only happened to him once. Kitt iseither stuck in his own Groundhog Day, or something stinks here.

Three years ago Kitt was ahead at Val d'Isere, France, until astorm came up and officials canceled the race after the first 22skiers had made their runs. Two years ago, on a blue-sky day inAspen, Kitt led a race by .83 of a second, which in the downhillis like winning the Iditarod when the next sled's dogs haven'teven been born yet. But midway through the Aspen competition, arut developed near a gate. An Austrian skier hurt his knee whenhis ski caught in the rut, which caused some European raceofficials to begin digging at the rut with a shovel and mutteringsomething nobody could understand but that was believed to be,``You want rut? We'll give you rut!'' It was decided that the new,improved rut was big enough to cause more injuries and that therace should not count, which is sort of like canceling the SuperBowl in the fourth quarter because the backup punter slipped on adivot.

Poor AJ. His career caught an edge after that, and only recentlyhas he shown signs of coming out of his slump -- like three weeksago at Aspen, where he led the race by .58 of a second, which islike leading by the length of a Ken Burns documentary. True, asnowstorm came up after only 31 of 68 skiers had finished, forcingthe race to be stopped, and, true, it was hard for the competitorsto see. But since the best skiers go first in the downhill, those31 were arguably the best 31 in the world. In fact, it's rare whenanybody outside the top-15 seeds wins. The last few skiers whocame down were finishing three and four seconds behind Kitt. Sothe on-site jury, consisting of four Alpine ski officials (twoEuropean, one U.S. and one Canadian), ruled unanimously that therace was official. Kitt had won. Lucy had finally held the balllong enough for Charlie Brown to kick it.

At the postrace press conference, Kitt, of Boulder, Colo., tearedup in front of his parents and his wife. They knew what he hadbeen through. When he accepted the trophy, he held it tight.

But then, on March 8, after his warmup run for the downhill inKvitfjell, Norway, he saw that sick look on everyone's face again.``It's kind of like when somebody pukes in a room,'' Kitt says.``Nobody has to tell you.''

The International Skiing Federation (FIS), a 17-member board ofcarbon-dated fossils based almost entirely in Europe, each ofthem voting by fax, overturned the Aspen jury's decision. Uh, Mr.Nicklaus, you know how you won the Masters on Sunday? Well, theboys in Gdansk have decided you didn't. Where are you hiding thegreen jacket?

Kitt was so dizzy with rage that he talked of retiring. AspenSkiing Co. was so disgusted it talked of pulling its mountain outof World Cup racing altogether. And Tom Anderson, the chief ofrace in Aspen that day, called the FIS ``a corrupt, ego-drivenmafioso machine.''

All of which raises some questions.

1) Why have a jury at the race if a bunch of guys in ascots aregoing to decide the outcome anyway?

2) For that matter, why not take the doddering fossils to the topof the Hahnenkamm downhill, put them in an old refrigerator andpush them down the run at 75 mph, and then let guys like Kittdecide whether the fossils should have to redo it again next weekin Altenmarkt?

3) Since about half the members of the FIS voting panel are Nordic(cross-country and jumping), not Alpine, skiing officials, whyare they allowed to vote on an event 7,000 miles away that theydid not see and know little about? Does the plumbers' union getto vote for Best Actress?

4) Why stop at changing results that are just three days old?Let's see. Billy Kidd, we're taking away that medal you won atInnsbruck in 1964. And somebody call Ingemar Stenmark and get allthose sweaters back. Oh, we've given it some thought, and we'vedecided Germany won World War II.

What will erase Kitt's next win? Sasquatch wandering onto thecourse? A crabmeat replica of the Beatles dropping from adirigible? A vote of the members of the All-England Lawn TennisClub?

Kitt has tried to keep his sanity through all of this. In fact, hewent out in the last downhill of the year, on March 15 at Bormio,Italy, and finished second. Kitt did not retire and did not turnhis hotel room into kindling. ``I'm not here for politics,'' hesays, ``I'm just here to ski fast.'' Like that matters.